


What Is Not and Never Was, or The Child Thief

by hrhrionastar



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: D'Hara Fest, Episode: s01e22 Reckoning, Episode: s02e10 Perdition, Episode: s02e20 Eternity, Episode: s02e21 Unbroken, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 18:04:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When five mysterious children climb out of the moat, neither injured nor wet, it’s clear something has gone wrong in the state of D’Hara. Kahlan wants to keep the children of her other selves. Cara…isn’t so sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Is Not and Never Was, or The Child Thief

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Haecceity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haecceity/gifts).



> **Prompt** : 4 or 5 years after Tears powerful magic happens and the alternate universe children RKCZ have undone and the C/D child Darken may or may not have killed show up

_The door doesn’t creak when it’s pushed open. The hinges are oiled daily by vigilant servants. Say what you will about the previous lord of this palace, his methods got results.  
  
A hairbrush lies on the low table, which is surrounded by cushions scattered on the rug as though someone usually sits on the floor. Next to the hairbrush, a doll with blond curls sits propped against three stacked blocks. The curls are pulled back into a braid, and the doll is wearing scraps of leather that might once have formed a woman’s glove.  
  
One of the drawers in the heavy wooden chest against the wall is partway open. A white sleeve appears to have caught on a splinter. The chest of drawers is sturdy, but rough, as if cut and assembled by a single, albeit determined, craftsman.  
  
The window is open. Fragments of birdsong filter in, sounding like children’s laughter.  
  
Eyes fill with tears. Someone pulls the curtains shut with an angry, despairing snap.  
  
In the gloom, the bed is barely discernible. But even the vaguest outline suffices to show its incredible, heartrending emptiness._   
  


* * *

  
It all started the day that Cara came into Richard and Kahlan Rahl’s favorite council room carrying two children and followed by three more.  
  
“Mama, why is your hair braided?” asked the grimy girl curled into Cara’s left shoulder. Her bare feet dug into Cara’s stomach while she reached for the Mord’Sith braid Cara had begun to wear again. The girl’s own hair was probably blond, under all the dirt, but Kahlan wouldn’t swear to it.  
  
“I’ve told you, Sophie,” drawled the eldest boy, in a voice so like Darken Rahl’s that Kahlan actually shivered, despite the heat of the day, and Richard dropped his hand toward the hilt of the Sword of Truth sheathed at his waist. “She’s not your mother. She’s mine.”  
  
“Mord’Sith steal you if you’re bad,” announced Sophie, apropos of nothing. She seemed to find this assertion perfectly commonplace, and not at all horrific.  
  
On Cara’s other shoulder, facing back toward the door, was a toddler in a Rahl-red ceremonial robe that Kahlan instantly disapproved—if you wanted your child to crawl before she was three, you just couldn’t put her in dresses that would drag on the floor even if she were standing.  
  
The toddler squirmed, trying to turn in Cara’s grasp to face the room. “Want! Want!” came a petulant shriek.  
  
Kahlan was unable to observe how Cara dealt with the screaming child because at that moment the other boy, the redheaded one, sidled over to the council table and picked up Dennee’s goblet. Pregnancy made Dennee crave obscure and nauseating concoctions like onion-raspberry-chocolate-chicken soup, and whatever was in her goblet wasn’t fit for this innocent child, or, indeed, for human consumption.  
  
Kahlan had barely picked up the goblet when her eyes caught those of the fifth child.  
  
It was as if her heart flew out of her body and landed in the girl’s two hands. Kahlan had felt nothing like it, not since Nicci had confessed her on the sands near the Pillars of Creation years ago. Not even to Richard had she lost her heart so fast, and so completely.  
  
Not even to Blessing, her own daughter, for Kahlan had carried Blessing for nine months. Her love had taken that time to grow, as Kahlan had known it would.  
  
But this—! Kahlan was unprepared for the violence of her feelings. One look into the dark eyes of the little girl lurking shyly behind the others, and Kahlan had only one thought: _mine_.  
  
“Wizard!” wailed Cara. Sophie had already undone half her braid, and warm golden hair fell dementedly over her chest. The toddler was chewing a strand of it.  
  
“I’ll get Zedd,” said Richard quickly. His eyes danced, but he was too good to outright laugh at his friend’s plight.  
  
Cara saw the mockery in his face, however, and held out the toddler. “Down!” she ordered Sophie, on her other side, and then to Richard, “ _I_ will fetch the wizard. You watch _him_ ,” with a jerk of her head toward the eldest boy, the one who looked and sounded so like Darken Rahl.  
  
Richard accepted the toddler, but he didn’t look happy about it, especially after he raised the small body to sniff for the state of the child’s swaddling clothes.  
  
Kahlan giggled. She felt giddy with surprise, with love, and with the surprise of love.  
  
She did not feel afraid.  
  
Not then.  
  


* * *

  
“Powerful magic,” Zedd proclaimed.  
  
“Of course,” said Cara. “How else could five children have risen out of the moat dry as bone?”  
  
“And jumped on you,” murmured Richard. “Don’t forget that.”  
  
Cara accidentally-on-purpose jabbed him with her elbow.  
  
“Actually, I was referring to my own efforts,” explained Zedd. “Those two were infested with small invisible biting creatures, which, I’m happy to report, will now _not_ be colonizing the entire palace.”  
  
Everyone—Richard and Kahlan, Zedd, Cara, and the five mysterious children had congregated back in the council room—looked at Sam and Sophia. Their skin was raw and pink, now that the dirt had been blasted off. Further casualties of Zedd’s magic included a good deal of Sophia’s hair and half of one of Sam’s fingernails. Cara, also a victim of Zedd’s quick de-bugging because she’d carried Sophia up from the moat, merely looked windblown.  
  
“Thank you, Zedd,” said Richard. He paused as if gathering his courage, before turning to look at the boy with the face of Darken Rahl. “How did you get here?” he asked.  
  
Kahlan focused all her Confessor power upon listening. Only she could determine the truth of whatever the youth told them.  
  
“I walked,” Rahl junior said.  
  
Everyone waited for about a minute, but that seemed to be all they were going to get.  
  
Zedd was the next to ask a question: “at least tell us who—“ he began, but was interrupted.  
  
“Sam and Sophia,” said Rahl junior, pointing at them. “Nicholas.” He grasped one of the toddler’s wrists and waved the tiny fist. “Sonia.” His other hand caressed the shy, dark-haired girl’s bent head.  
  
“My mother was called Sonia,” whispered Kahlan. She glanced under her lashes at Richard, a hope she hardly dared acknowledge rising in her breast. “Is she—?“  
  
“No,” said Richard. His face had gone white. Cara, standing behind his chair at the head of the council table, put a hand on his shoulder, and he reached up to grip her fingers.  
  
“Nicholas was your son with—with Darken Rahl,” Richard managed to get out at last. “Sonia…I dreamed her, in the Valley of Perdition.” Abruptly, he rose from his chair and strode to Rahl junior, Cara hard on his heels. “Are you real?” Richard demanded.  
  
The eyebrows rose superciliously. As before when he had answered Richard’s first question, Kahlan found the youthful version of her worst enemy’s face impossible to read. Was she simply projecting Darken Rahl’s agiel-given impenetrability onto his son? Or was there some more sinister source of Rahl junior’s immunity to Kahlan’s power?  
  
“No,” Rahl junior answered the Seeker. _His uncle_ , thought Kahlan. _Dear Creator_. “Are you?”  
  
The other children had kept unnaturally silent, but now Nicholas began to cry. He’d exhausted all available avenues of escape from the high chair Richard had built for Blessing when she was a baby, and was doubtless feeling frustrated.  
  
“Enough,” said Cara. It was not clear whether she spoke to Richard and Rahl junior, now locked in an exchange of stares that would have long since daunted even Kahlan, or to Nicholas. But she certainly made no move to soothe the infant Confessor.  
  
Kahlan rose, telling herself it was absurd to feel as if doom were closing in upon her. Nicholas was only a baby. This wasn’t his fault.  
  
Whatever ‘this’ was going to turn out to be.  
  


* * *

  
_Alice pulls the heavy curtains back. It’s a task that requires nearly all of her strength; this room was used as a nursery for Darken Rahl’s ancestors in a past that must have included maids with much stronger shoulders than she has. The light from the window spills in, but it is feeble and dull, like Alice’s beloved queen’s spirits.  
  
Lately it seems all that the Lady Kahlan can talk of is Aydindril: the majesty of the Hall of Judgment, the beauty of the gardens, the right and proper austerity of the Confessors’ heart-home. She misses it.  
  
Alice sighs, wishing she could do more for her queen. That poor woman had already suffered so much, and then to crown all—  
  
The drama of the moment forces Alice to glance at the crib. Normally she directs her steps around it, despite its commanding position in the exact center of the floor. They have Darken Rahl to thank for that, Alice and her sweet mistress. He won’t let his wife forget.  
  
Alice is blessed with limited mental capacity, however, and so she can forget. She can forget so well that it takes her a full minute to realize that Prince Nicholas is missing.  
  
She peers awkwardly over the edge of the crib at the smooth, unsoiled blankets, and murmurs, “I could’ve sworn this was where I left him…”_   
  


* * *

  
Kahlan ordered beds prepared for the children. That was easy enough, but a conversation between Richard and Kahlan conducted in fierce whispers prepared Cara for the inevitable: Richard would not ask a servant to take charge of two unknown Confessors (Nicholas and Sonia) no matter how young and seemingly harmless they were; and once Kahlan had been forced to accept that, it was only a short step to deciding that she and Cara must take responsibility for the children of their other selves.  
  
For Kahlan, this meant nothing more onerous than a lullaby or two. For Cara, it was otherwise.  
  
“I can’t sleep with a _roof_ over my head,” said Sam, balking at the door to his room.  
  
Cara stood in the hallway, all her weight plus Sophia on one hip. “You will sleep here,” she said, trying to make it an announcement of fact instead of an order, the way Darken Rahl used to do.  
  
It was a technique that rarely failed, and it did not fail now, but it came with a price: Cara had been having a moderate amount of success at keeping her once-lord from her thoughts, up until now.  
  
At her side, the son she’d born to Darken Rahl towered over Cara, watching her with a stranger’s eyes.  
  
Sam had gone into the room, and now stood glumly regarding the bed. Sophia squirmed out of Cara’s grip and followed her brother.  
  
“Where will I sleep?” she asked. “Can I be outside?” This with a fearful glance at the ceiling. Cara looked at it, too. It seemed perfectly innocuous.  
  
Her eyes stayed up there for perhaps a second longer than necessary. Then she looked back down at the children.  
  
“Good night,” said Cara.  
  
She did not make it to the doorway where the prodigal son (or was Cara the prodigal mother?) still stood, a silent, smirking witness. Instead Sam and Sophia grabbed at her arms, pleading with her to stay.  
  
It was probable that if she left before they fell asleep, they would wander the palace. Maybe even go outside and fall in the moat. That was the only reason Cara acquiesced.  
  
Kahlan, who appeared around a bend in the hallway while Cara was still trying to reach the door, smiled when offered this explanation. (Sam and Sophia loudly endorsed it, promising to leap into the moat and drown if ‘Mama’ did not stay with them.)  
  
But, “Will you be all right?” Kahlan asked, taking Cara’s hands in hers. Cara yielded to that gentle pressure, and some of the tension seemed to drain out of her tightened muscles.  
  
“I’ve kept stranger vigils,” she said lightly.  
  
Kahlan held Cara’s eyes with hers for a moment longer. Then she let go of Cara’s hands and glided down the corridor. Only after Kahlan was gone did Cara realize that her and Darken Rahl’s son had disappeared.  
  
Again.  
  


* * *

  
“Richard,” said Kahlan, “do you think—?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.” Kahlan shifted in bed, so that she was lying half on top of Richard. Her hair fell in a curtain around their faces, but could not conceal her pout from her husband.  
  
“You want to keep Nicholas and Sonia,” said Richard. “Kahlan, I can’t!”  
  
“She is mine!” Kahlan hissed. “I won’t let her go. And she’ll be a sister for Blessing. My miracle girl.”  
  
She smiled, thinking of Sonia. In a world as uncertain as Richard and Kahlan’s, every child was a blessing _and_ a miracle. Now Kahlan could have both.  
  
Richard reached up to stroke her cheek. His touch was gentle, and Kahlan knew that she was forgiven.  
  
Sonia was not Richard’s daughter. But she could be. If Kahlan had her way then all her children would be Richard’s. She wouldn’t let a little thing like Sonia’s true parentage stand in the way of that.  
  
“And Nicholas?” asked Richard.  
  
Kahlan sank down, burying her head in her husband’s shoulder. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he would probably still feel her tears, hot and wet on his skin.  
  
Richard and Kahlan did not sleep in Lord Rahl’s chambers. Kahlan had ordered them shut up years ago, as a condition of her moving into the People’s Palace. She’d considered having the furniture burned, and every trace of Darken Rahl’s personality eradicated from the space, but she’d known that it would not be enough. The sense of him would remain, to disturb her dreams.  
  
Ridiculous, to feel such nagging kinship, such an overpowering awareness of Darken Rahl even when he was long gone. Yet Kahlan did feel it.  
  
She had hoped that one day her insane sympathy for the ex-lord of D’Hara would fade. But Kahlan knew, and no doubt Richard guessed, that if they kept Nicholas than it never would.  
  
Worst of all, Nicholas was not only Darken Rahl’s son. He was a male Confessor. And Kahlan knew her duty.  
  
Yet how much worse would it be…she had hesitated with Dennee’s son years ago, and Kahlan was a mother herself now.  
  
Richard had told her next to nothing about the nightmare future where she had been Darken Rahl’s captive queen, but Kahlan felt the regret in his body, his hand when he stroked her hair. Richard knew they might have to kill Nicholas, and he had accepted it.  
  
Kahlan squeezed her eyes shut in a futile effort to keep the tears from falling. Perhaps it would be better to think of the children as displaced.  
  
Lost.  
  
Orphaned.  
  
Unwanted…  
  
No, Kahlan scolded herself. Nicholas was not hers to keep.  
  


* * *

  
Cara sat with her legs curled under her, listening to Sam and Sophia’s rhythmic breathing. The sound was peaceful, but Cara was neither soothed nor put to sleep by it. Her thoughts were too busy—and too painful—for that.  
  
Kahlan might see these strange children as symbols of the lives she would never lead, but for Cara it was about the son she _had_ born. She wished she could have raised him herself, not only because she had missed him the moment he was taken from her, but also because then she would have had at least a minimal chance of knowing the man he had become.  
  
Cara had earned her place as Lord Rahl’s First Mistress. And then she had given it all up in order to save her sisterhood from extinction, even though it meant letting Darken die. And then she had helped Richard save the world and take his place as Lord Rahl, putting her right back in her rightful role as First Mistress.  
  
But it was not the same.  
  
Darken Rahl, her once-lord and once-lover…Cara’s mind kept circling back to him as she stared into the cozy bedroom darkness. Darken Rahl had meant everything to her, once.  
  
The room was lightening. Cara frowned. Like many Mord’Sith, she had a very accurate internal clock. It was nowhere near dawn. So what—?  
  
Without warning, the door swung open. Cara’s son stood in the hallway, one hand holding a small wooden flute to his mouth and the other curled around a candlestick. Its meager light was still enough to blind night vision, and Cara had to blink several times before she could make out any more of the scene.  
  
Lifting her eyelids after each blink became progressively harder. Cara fought the sudden lethargy of her body, and peered out into the hall.  
  
Behind the prodigal Rahl with his lit candle, Sonia and Blessing held hands. They seemed to be singing something, but Cara couldn’t quite make out the words.  
  
Last of all, after the girls, came Nicholas. He was walking, but as Cara watched he took an unwarily large step and fell forward on his chin. There was a loud crack. But Nicholas just got up, making it to hands and knees and crawling determinedly after his not-sisters and the enigmatic light-bearer.  
  
Later, Cara swore that was the moment she first knew. No child who fell on his face would just get back up without even one cry of frustrated complaint. Not naturally. Not unless he was under some kind of spell.  
  
 _Join the dance_ , sang Sonia and Blessing. _Come join the dance._ Their linked fingers swung in the air, identically dark brown hair falling across their faces. They did look like sisters, Cara thought.  
  
She struggled to stay alert. Already the little procession was moving down the hall, and maybe it was the wooziness talking, but to Cara they looked like an army. But into what battles did her lost-and-now-found son propose to lead them?  
  
Cara’s last glimpse of the room before exhaustion claimed her was a yellow flash, as Sophia’s eyes opened.  
  


* * *

  
_Grace unlatches the back door softly, so as not to wake her sleeping husband. Their children have already eaten and skipped off to the schoolhouse, even though there is still early morning dew on the grass.  
  
Grace goes out a few steps. There’s a bush, behind which two bowls lie on a piece of loose stone. One of the bowls has been knocked over, and leftover stew from two nights ago is strewn in unappetizing heaps over the grass and the stone and the bush.  
  
Grace sighs. She replaces the bowls with the new ones she’s holding, and kneels to wipe away the worst of the mess with a dishcloth. If only her niece and nephew would be neater…  
  
Grace tried to take in Sam and Sophia, after Cara was murdered by the Mord’Sith. The fear always lurked in her mind that the Mord’Sith would come back, especially since she now had two young girls in her home (Sophia and her own daughter, Ella) but Grace knew her duty. Sam and Sophia needed her.  
  
Except that Grace could not keep them under her roof. She tried, oh how she had tried, but nothing worked, until at last her husband had forbidden her to try any longer. He’d always said that Cara was making a mistake, keeping both the farm and her job at the schoolhouse after Travis died. Every day, it seemed like, she’d dump Sam and Sophia on Grace. Was that looking after them? Cara would’ve done better to marry again, said Grace’s husband. He’s not surprised that Sam and Sophia have grown into savages.  
  
Grace eyes the two bowls from yesterday. Allowing for the mess, and animals sampling the stew, it doesn’t look like Sam and Sophia have even touched the food.  
  
Grace sits back on her heels and tries not to cry. Everything has gone so wrong, since Cara’s death. Not just in the village, with Sam and Sophia morphing into the feral children from the story of the founding of D’Hara (only they were two brothers, raised by lions) and Miss Cranton’s sudden retirement and mysterious disappearance.  
  
In the wider world, Grace knows because when they were girls she and Cara used to tease every traveler for news of the Seeker, and Grace has yet to outgrow her fascination with adventures heard about from a safe distance, things are even worse.  
  
Darken Rahl is back on the throne of D’Hara, and they say now that he can enspell anyone he sees with just a single glance. Lady Kahlan’s baby was born dead. And there are bands of orange-robed women roaming the Midlands who say they are looking for the Seeker.  
  
Grace picks up the uneaten bowls of congealed stew and goes back inside. She can only hope that, wherever they are, Sam and Sophia are happy._   
  


* * *

  
“I have spoken to Shota,” announced Zedd, at the breakfast table next morning. There was an uneaten buttered scone in front of him. Cara watched it uneasily. Food did not stay uneaten around the Wizard for long, in her experience.  
  
Traditionally Lord Rahl sat at the head of the breakfast table—there was even an unsubtly thronelike chair at that end—but Darken Rahl had not gone in for breakfast much, being usually still in bed at that hour. So Cara’d had little experience with the breakfast room until she’d followed Richard and Kahlan in their move to the People’s Palace.  
  
By rights, Richard should have sat in the throne at the head of the table and Kahlan down at the foot, where they could shout at each other along its considerable length. Instead, they sat next to one another, the better to feed each other bites off one another’s plates, hold hands, and generally ruin everyone else’s appetite.  
  
Although not so much this morning, Cara noticed.  
  
In fact, it was Kahlan and not Richard who sat in the throne. They both looked up at Zedd, waiting for the Wizard to go on.  
  
“These children must be returned to whence they came,” said Zedd.  
  
Cara glanced to her left. Yes, there was the prodigal Rahl, not even pausing as he poured syrup on his porridge. The other children weren’t down yet, or Zedd would probably not speak so plainly. For all his resemblance to Darken Rahl, Cara’s son seemed strangely adept at evading notice.  
  
“How?” Richard asked Zedd. “We don’t even know how they got here.”  
  
“I suppose their parents must be worried…” conceded Kahlan, obviously reluctant.  
  
Bizarre, thought Cara, to take either pride or guilt in the actions of your other self. Yet Kahlan clearly did both. Was all the pride for Sonia and all the guilt for Nicholas? Probably, true Confessor that Kahlan was.  
  
“Their parents!” Zedd burst out. “ _You_ are their parents!”  
  
 _Not quite_ , thought Cara. But her eyes were on the slimmer, younger version of Darken Rahl on her left. She was so hungry to know him. And yet she didn’t see herself in him at all.  
  
“It will not be so impossible,” Zedd claimed, visibly trying to keep his temper and addressing Richard. “Sam and Sophia go to the world where Cara was not a Mord’Sith and you lost the power of Orden to Darken Rahl. Nicholas to the world where Rahl forced Kahlan to marry him. Sonia to the vile nightmare into which the Valley of Perdition plunged you, Richard. We will return them to where they belong.”  
  
“If you send Sonia back into that horror then she’ll die!” yelled Kahlan, standing up. Like Cara and Zedd, she’d gotten the story of his Perdition-induced mental torment out of Richard years ago. The Keeper had won there, leaving only Richard unclaimed and alive. Kahlan, her daughter Sonia, her husband Phillip, and both Cara and Zedd had perished.  
  
“Every child you bring into the world will die,” Zedd said harshly. “And that one is not even real!”  
  
“Who are you to decide that?” Kahlan almost screamed in his face.  
  
Someone murmured quietly into Cara’s left ear. “She is not how I remember,” commented Darken Rahl junior.  
  
Cara turned fully in her seat in order to stare at him. What did he remember about Kahlan? Had he met some other version of her? He must have. Sonia and Nicholas weren’t Kahlan’s, not the Kahlan _Cara_ knew anyway, but they were hers in some virtual, unreal sense that nevertheless had Kahlan firing up in defense of the daughter Richard had _imagined_ for her in his worst nightmare.  
  
Had Cara’s son known those other Kahlans?  
  
Had he known other Caras?  
  
Did Cara really want to know if he had?  
  
As hard as she tried, she couldn’t trace the path he’d taken, from the moment he was whisked away after the birth to this moment when he sat beside her, mocking her dearest friends.  
  
Who was he, this son she’d never known? And what would he do when he found out that she, Cara, was not the beloved mother he’d no doubt spent his childhood longing for, but only a Mord’Sith gone hopelessly soft?  
  
She hadn’t even managed to stay awake for one whole night! Something nagged at Cara about her aborted vigil over Sam and Sophia, but she couldn’t quite remember what it was.  
  


* * *

  
Kahlan took Nicholas to the playroom after lunch—well, lunch for her. It was breakfast for the children. They seemed remarkably tired, even taking into account their presumably protracted journey through realities of the previous day.  
  
Blessing and Sonia were already in the playroom, Kahlan saw as she entered with Nicholas on her hip. Both girls leapt up to greet her from amid a fort made of pillows, blocks, and some books that Kahlan uneasily suspected were from Zedd’s supposedly highly secure magical laboratory.  
  
Kahlan smiled, but let her girls continue playing. She set up some blocks for Nicholas, stacking them in different configurations until he grew interested, and then watching from the window seat as he followed her example. He stacked the blocks semi-randomly at first, but it wasn’t long before his deft little hands had erected a precarious fort of his own, to match that of Blessing and Sonia.  
  
“Cass!” Nicholas announced, pointing at his creation. “Mama! Cass!”  
  
“What is it, sweetheart?” Kahlan asked. Her chest felt too tight, as if her heart were so full of love and sorrow that it was trying to burst from her chest. But her voice was soft and syrupy, calm and controlled. It was her talking-to-a-child voice, although Kahlan didn’t categorize her vocal tones so starkly. She was just trying to be kind.  
  
As always, she resented how much of a struggle projecting kindness was. Kahlan was the Mother Confessor. Compassion was her Creator-given duty, so why…? It was never so difficult for _Richard_.  
  
“Cass!” Nicholas shouted again. His face was turning red with frustration at his inability to communicate. Soon he would start crying, or worse try to confess someone, thought Kahlan, panicked.  
  
“Castle,” said Darken Rahl’s voice in Kahlan’s ear.  
  
She jumped up out of the window seat, pulse racing and pupils expanding with unspent power. Nor did her heart rate slow appreciably upon realizing it was not Darken Rahl, but his son, who had gotten so close without her even noticing.  
  
Rahl junior gave Kahlan a very Rahl smirk. Then he pulled a plain wooden flute from the pocket of his robes, and knelt beside Nicholas.  
  
The music Rahl junior coaxed from the flute was pretty, but not very complex. It was like Kahlan’s talking-to-children voice: sweet and warm, with the bitterness, and hence much of the meaning, edited out. But Kahlan liked it, despite her internal critique.  
  
She returned to the window seat. It offered her an excellent view of the door, through which Sam and Sophia, Richard and Cara and Zedd, eventually drifted. It was as if they were pulled to the playroom by the music, although it might only have been that they’d heard it and decided to find out what was happening.  
  
Cara got a strange look on her face when she saw Rahl junior with the flute. For the first time ever in the presence of the children, her hands strayed toward her agiels. Kahlan waited, worried, until Cara halted the gesture, before letting her attention stray from her old friend.  
  
Zedd—an even older friend, in both senses of the word—also frowned at Rahl junior and the flute. Did everyone except Kahlan dislike his playing so much? Or was it something else?  
  
Richard was the last to arrive in the playroom. He saw Rahl junior, and he didn’t stop at a scowl. In two strides he was towering over the kneeling youth. Richard yanked the flute away from Rahl junior so hard he drew blood, a bright red smear at the corner of the boy’s mouth.  
  
“Where did you get this?” Richard demanded, brandishing the flute.  
  
Nicholas had cried out when the music stopped. As well he might: Richard had stepped on the hem of Nicholas’s trailing Rahl red ceremonial robe. Kahlan swooped down upon Nicholas and carried him back to the window seat, murmuring soothingly. Richard was too focused on Rahl junior to catch her glare.  
  
“It was a gift,” said Rahl junior. He stood up slowly, touching two fingers to his mouth to wipe away the blood. “From my father.”  
  
“That thing,” pronounced Zedd, now peering at it over Richard’s shoulder, “is as unreal as the girl from Perdition.”  
  
“It’s the flute I made for Captain Ensor’s son!” Richard yelled. “He was afraid of the Whisperers,” he continued more calmly. “You remember, Kahlan—when I pretended to be a D’Haran soldier?”  
  
“Yes, of course,” said Kahlan mechanically. She was not like to forget any of her adventures with Richard, no matter how long ago. “But then how—?”  
  
“Mama, Sonia’s not from Perdition,” said Blessing. Kahlan was belatedly horrified to realize that her daughters had overheard the entire altercation from their pillow fort. “She told me. She’s from—“  
  
“The Underworld,” said Zedd. “That flute is coated with powerful dark magic. It should not be able to exist here at all—not unlike certain others.” He looked around significantly at the very full playroom. Sophia stuck her tongue out at him.  
  
“Where did you get this?” Richard asked again. His so-dear brown eyes were hard as stone, looking upon Rahl junior.  
  
“His father,” said Cara. She was pale, too pale; the golden tan of her skin had faded, leaving her looking washed out and weak. Kahlan knew the observation would horrify her friend. “Darken Rahl.”  
  


* * *

  
_Darken Rahl strides through the Underworld. His robes swirl and eddy with each step, giving the effect of the moon’s tides on an ocean of fresh blood.  
  
This Darken Rahl was created by the magic of Perdition. He was poured into the mold of Richard’s mind, Richard’s thoughts mapping his very being. So, naturally, every moment of his unlife—for the Underworld cannot be said to grant true life—is spent dreaming of new ways to torment Richard.  
  
Except.  
  
Except that there is not so much to fear in an enemy that only seeks your undoing. Darken Rahl has many concerns. He is a whole man—almost too much of one, in some realities.  
  
So even this Richard-filtered echo retains enough essence of Darken Rahl to permit of other dreams.  
  
Darken Rahl dreams of his son.  
  
A strong boy. A strong man. He has grown so much. His soul is not among those Darken Rahl rules—how could it be? Richard never knew he existed.  
  
This Underworld is peopled by the first-born sons of Brennidon; Denna; the Sisters of the Dark; Shota; the Sisters of the Light; the Confessors; all of D’Hara’s army, most killed by Richard personally; Cara; Richard’s adopted parents; Panis Rahl; the Margrave of Rothenberg; Richard’s adopted Westland village; the Seekers who replaced Richard; Phillip, the Seeker who replaced Richard in his Confessor’s bed and heart; Kahlan; and Kahlan’s daughter, fathered by Phillip, the last **last** Confessor.  
  
Darken Rahl is a parent himself. He would have showered his son in gifts, would have used every last sparkling drop of the dark power granted him by the Keeper, would have humbled himself completely (if awkwardly, humble being a difficult role for him to pull off) had the child so demanded.  
  
Instead, his son had asked for nothing from Darken Rahl. He had received something anyway—a small thing, hardly worth a thought.  
  
A flute.  
  
Just as Darken Rahl keeps his blood-swirled robes in the naked Underworld, so he has the power to recreate other objects. He can give them form and substance despite the wraithlike thinness of the Underworld, which clings to the Land of the Living, sucking reality in great big gulping rifts—greedy for a power no one here, not even the Keeper, can ever possess.  
  
So Darken Rahl created the flute. If it was Richard’s mind that shaped the instrument the way his hands had once shaped the wood, in another world and another life, then Darken was not aware of it.  
  
What Darken is aware of, now, in the endless now that is the Underworld, is a soul missing.  
  
There are the Confessors, some cringing from and some reveling in the punishing green flames. There are the Sisters of the Light, still in a rough circle, arms upraised in pleas to the Creator—who does not exist in this reality. Richard has never believed in Her.  
  
There are the D’Haran—  
  
Wait. Darken Rahl turns back to the Confessors. His robes snap and sweep and swirl with his every move, like a vampire’s latte.  
  
There is a Confessor missing.  
  
The last **last** Confessor.  
  
Kahlan’s daughter.  
  
Darken Rahl stands still, stunned by a revelation.  
  
His son is a thief._   
  


* * *

  
They never did get the story, of how he took Sonia and the flute from the Underworld and made them real, out of Rahl junior. They hardly got anything more out of him at all.  
  
Richard left Cara to watch over the other children for the afternoon while he and Kahlan and Zedd interrogated Rahl junior in their council room. Richard and Zedd bellowed rapid questions at him. Every so often—whenever Rahl junior condescended to say anything—they watched for Kahlan’s nod yes or shake the head no or twist of the lips maybe, to the unspoken ‘is he telling the truth?’  
  
Kahlan could sometimes tell. She was relieved that her Confessor lie-detecting powers had not entirely deserted her, or perhaps she was sorry, because this duty kept her from her children.  
  
Blessing and Sonia were her girls, her dear sweet girls. And even Nicholas—he made Kahlan’s heart ache, but it was in a good way. Was he evil? Perhaps, but couldn’t he be weaned from that wickedness? Richard and Kahlan had reclaimed Cara’s soul for the Creator, and she was a full-grown Mord’Sith, not a baby Confessor.  
  
And if seeing Nicholas drowned at the bottom of some pool _was_ where Kahlan’s duty lay, she still would’ve liked one last afternoon with him.  
  
She did finally escape the council room long enough to kiss Blessing and Sonia goodnight. Nicholas was already asleep, just like a little angel—or something like that. Kahlan kissed him, too.  
  
She went to bed alone. Richard came up very late. Kahlan pretended to be sleeping.  
  


* * *

  
_Join the dance,_ said the voices in Cara’s dream. _Come join the dance_. She woke with the sweet music of her son’s flute in her ears.  
  
It was just after dawn. Pink bars of light fell across Cara’s bed. Her first real waking thought was that it was quiet—so quiet and peaceful. Cara’s room was not far from Sam and Sophia’s, and they slept fitfully indoors. They should already be awake, clamoring at her door, begging for Mama to make them breakfast, as if Cara ever cooked or would ever have to cook so long as she lived in the People’s Palace surrounded by servants.  
  
She threw back the blankets, grabbed a robe to cover her nakedness, and ran out into the hall.  
  
Cara’s search did not take long. None of the children were in their rooms. Not Sam and Sophia, not toddler Nicholas, not Kahlan’s precious Sonia, not even the princess Blessing. Not Cara’s son.  
  
Zedd’s search, once Cara had awoken him, was even shorter. He extended his senses throughout the palace and its environs. His long gray hair swayed slightly in the breeze generated by such powerful magic.  
  
“Nothing,” concluded Zedd. “Not a trace. They’re gone.”  
  
He sounded a little smug—until Cara requested him, through clenched teeth, to check for all the children born of some version of her or some version of Kahlan, including Blessing. Only when he’d done so did Zedd abandon his air of righteous satisfaction.  
  
“She’s gone! He’s taken her too!” the Wizard exclaimed. “That black-hearted, Keeper-cursed—“  
  
Cara left then, because no matter her own feelings of guilt and betrayal, she couldn’t listen to Zedd call her son such awful names or she might kill him.  
  
Zedd, that was; Cara’s son was once more beyond her reach to either protect or harm.  
  
All four of them convened in Richard and Kahlan’s favorite council room. Kahlan’s eyes were puffy and swollen. Richard carried the Sword of Truth, the blade free of its sheath and gleaming orangy-red all along its length.  
  
“I could’ve stopped this,” said Cara, into that awful silence. “I knew that flute was magic. But I hesitated. I let him enspell me.”  
  
No need for the others to ask which ‘him.’  
  
“We’ll find Blessing,” Richard swore. “We will. Find. Her.”  
  
Zedd cleared his throat. “It seems likely that they will have jumped to another reality…”  
  
Technical, magical theories whirled over Cara’s head as Zedd prepared to instruct Richard in the tasks and challenges of their new quest. She paid them little attention. Her eyes were on Kahlan.  
  
“My son will return,” Cara said.  
  
Kahlan’s face when she raised it out of her pillowed arms was set like a mask, dead with defeat. “How could the Creator do this to me?” she asked, her voice as full of innocent wonder as any of the children they’d lost.  
  
The door creaked open. Wild hope shone in Kahlan’s blue eyes, but it was only Dennee.  
  
She waddled in, feet splayed wide in order to balance her bloated stomach. Dennee was heavily with child.  
  
“Where’s Blessing?” she asked. “I never see her lately. And out with it: which of you told the cook not to make me onion-raspberry-chocolate chicken soup anymore?”  
  
Richard and Zedd ignored Dennee completely, while her first question had already sent Kahlan hiding behind her hair. Cara strolled to the window, her hands clasped tightly behind her. Could she break her own fingers?  
  
“Oh, yes,” she said, staring out at the moat where the children had emerged, just days ago, and jumped on her. Cara thought of Dennee’s baby. Almost ready to be born. “My son will be back.”


End file.
